Home Automation Gathers Pace

In the past few years, even smart phones and desktop computers have built-in AI personal assistants. Having those, or other apps, integrate to automate other aspects of your home is a major trend, and will only increase in the future as the ‘internet of things’ becomes the norm.

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But home automation isn’t just automating shopping lists and reminders, but integration between your AI assistant and a number of aspects of your home. Here are some current and near future trends in automation to watch for.

Personal Assistants

As mentioned, most smartphones and desktop computers now have integrated AI personal assistants, from Amazon’s Alexa to Apple’s Siri to Microsoft’s Cortana. While these started out as nothing more than a text-to-speech engine that could perform web searches or add calendar reminds, now thanks to neural networks, these assistants can increasingly make relevant suggestions and contributions based on their concept of ‘you’.

Heating and Lighting

With an increasing rollout of smart electrical meters and thermostats, personal assistant and smartphone integration with home heating and lighting is on the increase.

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Automation providers such as http://digitalinteriors.co.uk/project/home-automation-systems/ offer ‘wake up’ services, where heating will gradually be increased and lights turned on toward a specified wake up time based on user’s preferences, meaning you wake up to a warm and bright home, instead of a cold and dark one.

Cleaning and Outdoor

Roomba and other vacuum robots have been on the market since 2002, but the modern robots only resemble those from 10 years ago in basic function.

Modern vacuum and lawn mowing robots are connected through the internet of things and can be triggered remotely rather than manually or on a strict schedule, so you can bring unexpected company home to a freshly vacuumed house.

In addition to mowing your lawn, wireless-aware sprinkler systems can keep your garden alive and well, even potentially triggering automatically based on the weather patterns and user preferences.

Cooking and Health

Intelligent scales integrate in many ways with personal health and fitness apps and websites, automating the process and keeping everyone honest with themselves, for maximum benefit.

Additionally, smart ovens and other kitchen apparatus can integrate with smartphones, either for remote control in order to have your dinner ready when you walk in the door, or even to detect the food in the oven, and cook it to a specified degree.